iCar Asia Limited accelerates market-leadership in Malaysia & Indonesia
October 31st, 2014
iCar Asia Limited (ASX:ICQ), owner of ASEAN's number 1 network of automotive portals today released its latest quarterly Appendix 4C. Cash receipts for the period increased by 61% over the prior corresponding period to $0.66m, while net operating cash outflow was $3.5m. iCar Asia finished the period with $10.5m in cash and cash equivalents.
The company continued to demonstrate strong growth while making ongoing investments in people, marketing for audience leadership and building the region’s leading products.
Key Operating Metrics
The key operating metrics of Listings, Audience & Leads showed strong growth, expanding iCar Asia’s market-leading positions.
Malaysia – Foundation now set for revenue growth
iCar Asia’s Malaysian business, Carlist.my continues to extend its market-leadership position across core metrics. Audience continues to increase, resulting in over 100,000 individual car buyers sending leads to sellers during the month of September. This increase in the number of people sending leads is supporting car dealer engagement growth, with over 1,550 car dealers in Malaysia using iCar Asia’s Response Management System (RMS) during September to manage their vehicle listings and car buyer leads. In addition, 68% of all cars on Carlist.my are now self uploaded by car dealers and sellers. The paid Feature Listing product also continued to grow strongly, with 1,438 Dealers paying for a Feature Listing in September. Dealers also paid for over 53,000 cars to be “bumped” to positions of prominence in the search results during September.
Damon Rielly, CEO of iCar Asia said, “Carlist.my continues to grow its leadership position and Dealers are responding by buying more and more of our products, helping them sell more cars”
Rielly continued, “They are extremely engaged with our RMS, and it is helping them to better manage their dealerships, advertising and to sell their inventory more efficiently. It is a very exciting time for our Malaysian business as we begin to transition our strategy to focus on revenue growth.”
Indonesia – Number 1 Automotive Site Across all Key Metrics
iCar Asia’s Indonesia business, Mobil123.com continues to grow its market-leadership position in the key metrics of Listings, Audience and Leads. In particular, the number of individual car buyers sending leads to car sellers via the Mobil123.com website saw 216% growth over the latest quarter.
The push into the new car market has also begun with the Mobil123.com version 2.0 site now live with a new News section dedicated to new vehicles. In the 10 days post the launch, average Unique Visitors to the new News section were up by 167%.
Mr Rielly said, “Mobil123 continues to increase its market-leading position, in particular with the continued growth in Leads and the efficiency at which we are converting unique visitors to leads for our car dealers.” He continued, “The Indonesian version of our RMS is on track for release during the fourth quarter of this year, which will be coupled with the next release of our Mobil123.com version 2.0 site, complete with a “new car showroom” and revamped homepage designed for the Indonesia car buyer. It is a very exciting time for us in Indonesia and we continue to forge ahead”.
Thailand – Strong Number 2
iCar Asia’s Thailand business, Thaicar.com has established a strong number 2 market position, and continues to boast leadership in the key metric of Listings. During September, Thaicar.com released a new localised home page designed to increase the car buying audience, during the redesign period marketing was diverted from thaicar.com effecting the September audience results. Positively the number of people sending leads remained strong and initial results demonstrate positive Audience growth.
Mr Rielly said, “The entire team is completely focused on delivering our internal targets for
Listings, Audience, Leads and revenue in all markets, all of which we are very confident of
achieving which will ensure a positive end to 2014. We have very strong momentum in all three countries and very happy about where we are and our ability to achieve the goals we have set moving forward.”
Sources: Google Analytics and internal
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1 Damon Rielly – “With mobile usage continuing to grow and an increased ability to measure behavior of visitors to our site, we are beginning to focus on the next stage of lead measurement. To better understand how effectively we are converting Audience to Leads, we are now focused on how many individual visitors to our sites become leads for our car sellers. As such, one lead is now measured as any buyer who generates leads on our website, regardless of how many leads they generate.”
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About iCar Asia Limited (www.icarasia.com)Listed on the Australia Securities Exchange, iCar Asia (ASX: ICQ) owns and operates ASEAN’s No.1 network of automotive portals. Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the company is focused on developing and operating leading automotive portals in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. iCar Asia is continuously working to capitalise on its market-leading positions, with its online properties currently reaching approximately 12million car buyers and sellers in the region every month.iCar Asia Network of websites:
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